The Liberal Democrat peer Julie Smith - Baroness Smith of Newnham - visited Church Stretton in Shropshire earlier this month. I have been sent some photographs from her visit. See if you can spot the common factor. That's right. This small Shropshire town is faced with the loss of its library, swimming pool and ohter facilities because of spending cuts by the county council. Meanwhile, Barclays is planning to close the last bank in Church Stretton. Julie Smith said during her visit: "Facilities like the pool, the library, the children's centre and the visitor information centre all play an important ...
Wed 27th
20:08
Lib Dem councillor ordered to apologise after attacking panel that recommended he get a pay rise
Hmm... A councillor has been ordered to make a public apology for criticising members of a panel who recommended he and his colleagues get a pay rise. Liberal Democrat Michael Charlesworth has been found to have breached Leicestershire County Council's members' code of conduct with comments he made during a debate about allowances... During the debate Coun Charlesworth rose to read a pre-prepared statement in which he said the IRP - made up of former De Montfort University vice-chancellor David Wilson, former council lawyer Jayne Kelly and former bursar of Loughborough University Micheal Pearson - had not reached their conclusion ...
Wed 27th
19:49
We need affordable housing in Shropshire but will lose out because of a government statistical trick
The government has announced that it will allow local councils to borrow more £1 billion to build new council houses. Not a penny of this will be available to Shropshire. This is yet another blow delivered by Westminster. Most housing developments in our county do not pay affordable housing contributions after ministers decreed that small developments should be exempt from the levee. Now it is using a statistical trick to bar us from accessing funds to build new council housing. Shropshire needs 6,000 additional affordable houses to bring it up to the national average provision. That would all but wipe ...
The Supreme Court ruling that civil partnerships should be open to opposite sex couples is a welcome instruction to the government to update our personal relationship laws. Marriage law has long been an interest of mine, both as a politician and due to one of my major hobbies outside politics, as a genealogist. It's time [...]
Second paragraph of third chapter of "Cheating the Reaper", by Jonathan Clements: The roar of the engines increased drastically, telling Benny that they were blowing their little hearts out, cancelling the weight of the dropship, cushioning it as it settled on its legs. And then, with a cavalier flick of a switch, Vyshinsky killed most of the power. Second paragraph of third chapter of "The Ship of Painted Shadows", by Marc Platt: 'Just keep your nose out of other people's business,' she heard her father say in his familiar, controlled, yet exasperated tone. It was a lesson she had wilfully ...
Two bad decisions by our government were reported in yesterday's papers. The one that hit the front pages was that parliament has approved, with a huge majority, the government's plan to build a third runway at London Airport. The Conservatives were whipped to vote in favour but Labour MPs were given a free vote. Happily the Liberal Democrats voted against. I believe this is a bad decision for three reasons: Because of its polluting and global warming effects we should be aiming to cut down on air travel rather than encouraging more of it. The argument that an expanded ariport ...
Several comments on LibDem Voice last week argued that we're all too late to stop Brexit: 'it's a done deal.' Except that it's not: we have a government that still has no clear idea of what future economic relationship it wants to have with the EU after we leave, and no coherent proposals for managing our future borders with the EU. 9 months from the date on which the UK is committed to leaving, Theresa May is holding together a divided Cabinet by endlessly postponing hard decisions that would trigger resignations from one side or another. The odds are rising ...
[IMG: Flyposting on street furniture] Another day, another business decides that rules are not for them, and that they'll advertise their business or event on posters on street furniture somewhere in Folkestone and Hythe. Flyposting is illegal and, especially when done onto lampposts in the middle of the road, dangerous too. Seeing a poster is MUCH less important than seeing whats coming the other way down the road to drivers and pedestrians alike. I reported this most recent incidence last night to both Folkestone and Hythe District Council, and Kent Highways. I wasn't sure which had responsibility: I recalled Folkestone ...
The trustees of the Chichester Hall want to update you or the works we have planned for the hall through to the end of the year. [IMG: Chichester Memorial Hall, Sandgate] We know we have an issue with water coming into the hall on the left (North Lane) side of the main hall and also in the stairwell. Although we have had a number of survey reports etc, some of the works, and the cost, will be dependent on what is found when works start. Our budget is therefore flexible: we'll do as much as we can! In late July, ...
"Boom boom, guys! Liberalism is happy, healthy, and alive!" That seems to be the message coming from the party leadership, which should tell you everything you need to know. There is a problem with the Liberal Democrats, and it's a ... Continue reading →
Cllr Mike Drew has held an initial meeting with residents in the new Autumn Brook development. They are paying a fee to a management company for maintaining the play areas and open spaces, but they're not being looked after properly. All your Yate Councillors have pressed for these areas to be handed over to the Town Council and the management fee to be scrapped. they believe that you should not be treated any different to the rest of the Town where the Town Council manages the play areas and parks. If you think you're not getting value for money, please ...
Styal Prison and remand Centre which replaced the notorious 'grisly' Risley and provides greater support for women offenders to help prevent re-offending It's not often that I approve of what this Government is doing these days as it bashes and ... Continue reading →
Imagine what would happen if, due to an unfortunate editing error, the transport and housing policy speeches of a centre-left, environmentally friendly politician - who could be a Lib Dem, Green, Labour, Ukip, Plaid, SNP, SDLP or even a wet Tory - got mixed up.
View Poll: World Cup, Day Fifteen You should be able to vote using your Facebook or Twitter account, even if you aren't on Livejournal. Nobody called all four of yesterday's matches; drplokta, vilakins and I got three each, missing Peru/Australia, France/Denmark and Nigeria/Argentina respectively.
Tories cheered when a reduction in Police budget was announced. Conservatives were going to cut funding, and the Police were going to keep their coverage and levels of activities by better utilisation of their resources. Even when the Police warned that crime would go up with the proposed cuts, the budgets were reduced. The consequence has been an increase in crime. Eventually, the Tories will have an epiphany that if they provide more funding to the Police, they will have more resources to fight crime. They never learn. Knife crime went down from 2011 to 2015. But in 2017 alone ...
After more than a hundred thousand protestors gathered in central London last weekend, Lord Adonis tweeted a picture of proceedings with the caption "The moment Brexit died?" It highlights how much the anti-Brexit group think they have slain the enemy, which I think may be very much be the product of bubble politics. Sure, Leave and Remain are still neck in neck in polls on the subject, with Remain even slightly ahead of late (had the negotiations gone smoother to this point, I would expect at least a 30 point lead for Leave based on confirmation bias), but is Brexit ...
Tue, 12:56: Great thread. https://t.co/lDQrqhw0UT Tue, 13:11: World Cup, Day Fourteen https://t.co/Fj1EGgwUuP Tue, 16:05: Fern Seeds and Elephants https://t.co/hwcvhJ206M On miracles and faith. Tue, 18:17: Ghana Must Go, by Taiye Selasi https://t.co/TNriji0gHp Tue, 23:00: RT @EU2018BG: #FYROM 🇲🇰 and #Albania 🇦🇱 given path to open accession talks next June. Preparations for the #EUCO finalised. 🔦 What else i... Wed, 10:45: The DUP didn't think Brexit would be this complicated https://t.co/Zs4dNkcnq8 You don't say.
Some additional information has been submitted for the Winnersh Relief Road Phase 2 planning application. Having read it, I have sent the following comments to the planning officer: "Whilst I accept that Phase 2 of the Winnersh Relief Road is a necessary piece of strategic infrastructure for the Borough, some aspects of the design that has been submitted will have a significant detrimental impact on Winnersh residents. These include the prohibition of some right turns and the impact of the positioning of two roundabouts on the access for some properties on Reading Road and on residential roads off Reading Road. ...
Just when you thought that the consequences of leaving the EU could not get any worse, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) tell us that the Treasury's previous estimates of £35bn to £39bn failed to take into account an additional £10bn of costs to the government, including £3bn towards the European Development Fund, which provides overseas aid. Their estimate that Britain could end up paying up to £50bn for the Brexit divorce bill must surely scupper any UK Government thoughts of a Brexit dividend, even if the Ministers concerned ever really believed that anyway. As the Independent reports, Britain's divorce bill ...
A visit to Maghull North railway station yesterday morning, for a train to Liverpool, brought up a few issues, one of which must be driving the residents of Mersey Avenue round the bend! A refer to the testing of the station announcements system; I don't think I've ever heard anything like it! Noisy yes, but also all kinds of weird noises and verbal statements. Each time it kicked in I had to stop a conversation with a chap stood next to me. Has it really been necessary to inflict this on the Mersey Avenue residents living yards away? Secondly the ...
A few years ago, on a trip to Kenya, I chatted to some locals about why they wanted to come to the UK. These were all young, fit, intelligent, healthy people, and unsurprisingly they wanted to come to the UK to get a job. The average wage in Kenya is about £700 per annum compare [...] The post In praise of immigration appeared first on Radix.
The government is keen to play up the supposed benefits of Brexit. We are now getting to the 'business end' of the negotiations and as expected all is not as it seems. The government is talking up walking away with no deal instead of an accepting a bad deal (a bad deal would be an admission of its failure to negotiate with the EU) with the Brexit dividend that will be used to provide the NHS with a birthday present. Regarding the dividend, the Institute of Fiscal Studies made it clear that this was twaddle. Just over a year ago ...
From Dundee City Council : Dundee City Council proposes to make an Order under Section 14(1) of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 for the purpose of facilitating traffic signal refurbishment works. The Order is expected to be in force for two weeks from 2 July 2018. Its maximum duration in terms of the Act is eighteen months. The effect of the Order is to prohibit temporarily all vehicular traffic in (1) the right turn from Greenmarket into South Marketgait, (2) the right turn from South Marketgait (southbound) into Greenmarket and (3) the right turn into Yeaman Shore from South ...
Wed 27th
02:30
Woman threatens man with someone else's crutch outside McDonald's in Loughborough - because she thou...
Our Headline of the Day comes from the Leicester Mercury. Just another day in Loughborough.
The Carey Memorial Baptist Church is surrounded by terraced streets that once housed Kettering's boot-and-shoe workers. Some of the factories where they worked can still be found there. Once every street corner was home to a shop - the streets must have been buzzing with commerce. What drained that spirit from these streets. Supermarkets? Planning laws? This former shop still bears some signage from the days when it was open for trade. Was it a family butcher? Even the street name sign higher on the wall has a spectral companion. The ghost of an earlier prince?
